But Palfrey was too busy, too pressed, too late. He hopped onto the curb, then ducked back into the cab to grab his umbrella.
"Ask your master," he whispered. But so softly that Goodhew in his deafness was not absolutely sure.
SEVENTEEN
There was Crystalside and there was Townside, and though the two were separated by a mere half-mile as the frigate bird flew, they could have been different islands, because between them sat the hillock proudly called Miss Mabel Mountain, the highest point of all the islands far around, which wasn't saying much, with an apron of haze hoisted round her midriff, and the broken-down slave houses at her feet, and her forest where shafts of sun shone like daylight through a broken roof.
Crystalside was meadowed as an English shire, with clusters of umbrella trees that from a distance could have been oak, and English cattle fences, and English ha-has, and vistas of the sea between soft English hilltops artfully landscaped by Roper's tractors.
But Townside was dour and blowy like Scotland with the lights on, with scraggy goat fields on the slant, and tin shops, and a cricket field of blown red dust, with a tin pavilion, and a prevailing easterly that flicked the water in Carnation Bay.
And around Carnation Bay, in a crescent of pastel-painted cottages, each with its front garden and steps leading to the beach, Roper accommodated his white staff. Of these cottages, Woody's House was unquestionably the most desirable, by virtue of its stylishly fretted balcony and its unspoiled view of Miss Mabel Island in the middle of the bay.
Who Miss Mabel was, God alone knew, though she had left her name on a presumptuous hillock, an uninhabited island, on a defunct bee farm, an abortive cotton industry and a type of lace doily nobody knew how to make anymore. "Some fine old lady from slavin' times," said the natives shyly when the close observer asked. "Best let her memory sleep."
But everyone knew who Woody was. He was Mr. Woodman from England, a predecessor of Major Corkoran from way back, who had come with the first wave when Mr. Roper bought the island, a charming friendly man to the natives till the day the Chief ordered him locked up in his house while the protection asked him certain questions and accountants from Nassau went through the books, tracing Woody's rackets. The whole island was holding its breath by then, because one way or another the whole island had been a partner in Woody's operations. Finally, after a week of waiting, two of the protection drove Woody up Miss Mabel Mountain to the airstrip, and Woody needed both of them because he couldn't walk well. To be exact, his own mother could have been forgiven for stepping over him on the pavement without recognising her little boy from England. And Woody's House with its fretted balcony and fine view of the bay had stayed empty ever since, as a warning to everyone on the island that while the Chief was a generous employer and landlord and a fine Christian man to the virtuous, not to mention donor and life chairman of the Townside Cricket Club and the Townside Boys Club and the Townside Steel Band, he could also be relied upon to beat the living shit out of anybody who ripped him off.
* * *
The combined role of saviour, escaped murderer, convalescent houseguest, Sophie's avenger and Burr's spy is not an easy one to master with aplomb, yet Jonathan with his limitless adaptability assumed it with seeming ease.
You give the air of looking for someone, Sophie had said. But I think the missing person is yourself.
Each morning after an early jog and swim, he put on a T-shirt and sneakers and a pair of slacks and set off to make his ten o'clock appearance at Crystal. The walk from Townside to Crystalside took him barely ten minutes, yet each time he made it, it was Jonathan who set out and Thomas who arrived. The route led him along a bridle path cut in Miss Mabel's lower slopes, one of half a dozen Roper kept open through the woods. But for most of the year it was a tunnel because of the overhanging trees. A single rain shower left it pattering and dripping for days.
And sometimes, if his intuition had guided him correctly, he would meet Jed on her Arab mare, Sarah, returning from her morning ride in the company of Daniel and Claud the Polish stable master and maybe a couple of houseguests. First he would hear the sound of hooves and voices from higher in the woods. Then he would hold his breath as the party trekked down the zigzag path until it appeared at the opening to the tunnel, where the horses broke into a homebound trot, the equestrienne leading and Claud bringing up the rear, and Jed's flying hair turning red and gold in the light patches and making an absurdly beautiful match with Sarah's blond mane.
"Gosh, Thomas, isn't it absolutely gorgeous?" Jonathan agrees it is. "Oh, Thomas, Dans was pestering about whether you'd take him sailing today ― he's so spoilt.... Oh, will you really?" She sounds almost despairing. "But you spent the whole of yesterday afternoon teaching him how to paint! You're a darling. Shall I tell him three o'clock?"
Take it down, he wanted to tell her, as a friend. You've got the part, so stop overacting and be real. All the same, as Sophie would say: she had touched him with her eyes.
* * *
And other times, if he took an early run along the shore, he might chance to meet Roper in shorts, ploughing barefoot through the wet sand at the edge of the surf, sometimes jogging, sometimes walking, sometimes pausing to face the sun and do a few exercises, but all with the mastery he brought to everything: this is my water, my island, my sand, my speed.
"Morning! Marvellous day," he would call, if he was of a mood to play. "Run? Swim? Come on. Do you good."
So they would run, and swim in parallel for a while, talking sporadically till Roper would suddenly wade ashore, collect his towel and, without a word or backward glance, stride off in the direction of Crystal.
* * *
"Of every tree you may freely eat," Corkoran told Jonathan as they sat in the garden of Woody's House watching Miss Mabel Island darken with the sunset. "The serving wenches, parlour maids, cooks, typists, masseuses, the lady who comes to clip the parrot's claws, even the guests, are yours for the discreet plucking. But if you ever try to lay so much as a you-know-what on Our Lady of Crystal, he'll kill you. So will I. Just for deep background, old love. No offence."
"Well, thanks, Corky," said Jonathan, making a joke of it. "Thanks very much indeed. Having you and Roper baying for my blood would just about complete my luck. Where did he find her, anyway?" he asked, fetching more beer.
"Legend has it, at a French horse sale."
So that's how it's done, thought Jonathan. You go to France buy a horse and come away with a convent girl called Jed. Easy.
"Who did he have before?" he asked.
But Corkoran's gaze was fixed on the pale horizon. "Do you know," he complained in frustrated marvel, "we tracked down the captain of the Star of Bethel, and even he can't prove you're lying in your fucking teeth?"
* * *
Corkoran's warning is a waste of breath. The close observer has no protection from her. He can watch her with his eyes shut. He can watch her in the candlelit bowl of a silver spoon by Bulgari of Rome, or in the silver candlesticks by Paul de Lamarie that must appear on the Roper dinner table whenever he comes back from selling farms, or in the gilt mirrors of Jonathan's own imagination. Despising himself, he explores her night and day for confirmation of her awfulness. He is repelled by her and therefore drawn to her. He is punishing her for her power over him ― and punishing himself for giving way to it. You're a hotel girl! he yells at her. People buy space in you, pay you and check out! Yet at the same time he is consumed by her. Her very shadow taunts him as she saunters half-naked across the blushing marble floors of Crystal on her way to swim, sunbathe, caress oil onto her skin, turn crookedly onto her hip, her other hip and then onto her belly, while she chats with her visiting friend Caroline Langbourne or gorges herself on her escapist bibles: Vogue, Taller, Marie-Claire or the Daily Express, three days old. And her jester Corkoran in his Panama hat and rolled-up trousers, sitting ten feet from her, drinking Pimm's.